This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 5/13/17

Saturday:
Saturn is a half a fist to the right of the Moon at midnight.

Sunday: So
you think your mother has problems on Mother’s Day because she had you as you
as a child? Her mother issues can’t be as bad as Cassiopeia’s issues. First,
she was chained to a chair for boasting about her beauty. Second, she has to
revolve around the North Star night after night. Third, her daughter Andromeda
was nearly killed by a sea monster. Look for poor Cassiopeia about one and a
half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the north horizon at 10 p.m.
Cassiopeia looks like a stretched out “W”.

Monday: The Space Shuttles have been retired. But NASA is
still making plans about the future of space flight. Here is a presentation
about the past and future of American space flight https://goo.gl/hApbaf.
It is interesting to compare the sizes of these real spaceships to the dozens
of fictional spacecraft summarized on a poster found at http://goo.gl/F95aEL.

Tuesday: Give me an “M”.
Give me a “3”. What does that spell? “M3.” “Big deal,” you say. It was a big
deal to French comet hunter Charles Messier (pronounced Messy A). M3 was the 3rd
comet look-alike that Messier catalogued in the late 1700s. M3 is a globular
cluster, a cluster of over 100,000 stars that is 32,000 light years away. It is
too dim to be seen with the naked eye but is fairly easy find with binoculars.
First find Arcturus six fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. Move your
binoculars up a little so two stars of nearly identical brightness are in your
field of view. When the top star is in the lower left part of your field of
view, there should be a fuzzy patch near the center of your field of view. This
is M3.

Wednesday: Mercury is as far as it is going to get from the Sun this month
in the morning sky. Often that means good viewing. But not this month. Mercury
is less than a half a fist above the east horizon at 5 a.m. Venus will be much
easier to see at one fist above the east horizon. By early July, Mercury will
be visible low in the western evening sky.

Thursday:
This is a good time of the year to find the Big Dipper. It is nearly straight
overhead at 9:30 p.m. The cup is to the west and the handle is to the east. You
can always use the Big Dipper to find some other bright stars. First, follow
the curve, or arc, of the Big Dipper down three fists into the southern sky.
This is the bright star, Arcturus, the second brightest nighttime star we can
see in Ellensburg. Next, continue on a straight line, or spike, another three
fists down toward the south horizon to the star Spica. Spica is the tenth brightest
nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg. It is known as the Horn Mansion, one
of 28 mansions, or constellations, in the Chinese sky. You now know how to use
the Big Dipper handle to “arc” to Arcturus and “spike” to Spica.

Friday: Jupiter
is four fists above due south at 10:11 p.m.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.